


if we were made of water

by darkdancer



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Inappropriate Use of the Force, alexa can you play "once upon a dream" but like the lana del rey version, canon compliant (sort of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkdancer/pseuds/darkdancer
Summary: A part of her knows him in white as in black, just like she knows him with gray in his hair, surrounded by city lights, passing her on an unknown street, in his mother’s arms, perhaps even on the brink of falling into her own. She’s felt him around her, seen them beside one another. The knowing leaves her with nothing and the nothing, oh how it makes her ache.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	if we were made of water

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a long drive and [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naNBAlzNKQk)

i. grit 

  
  


Sand-marred and wind-wild, she is a true daughter of the desert; the type of survival borne of desolation takes root and blooms within the sinews of her body in a mockery of fate. The harshness of the ground and air and sky coiled around her like clothing, wrapping her in weathered skin and calluses. With a mother’s fierceness, Jakku swallowed armies so that one day an abandoned girl could rest her head, the hollow rushing of unrestrained wind a mournful lullaby of things lost, never to be found.

  
  


The heat of day fed her lessons in practicality; she discovered the consequences of forgotten goggles, of drinking too much water or caving to the temptation of eating extra rations today at the expense of tomorrow. The deadly triad of dehydration, starvation, and exhaustion formed her into a pillar of self-denial. Amidst centuries of dry bones, restraint equals survival; and in many ways, her life still hinges upon such stringent discipline because—

_You imagine an ocean,_ he had said, 

and _stars_ , how can she run from someone who knows her greatest secrets? The brown of his eyes echoed in her soul like a nostalgic, half-forgotten sound until she could no longer sleep on Ahch-To, too scared of the fleeting memories in her dreams, too frightened of facing why she sees him young, why she recognizes him lanky and in tan robes. A part of her knows him in white as in black, just like she knows him with gray in his hair, surrounded by city lights, passing her on an unknown street, in his mother’s arms, perhaps even on the brink of falling into her own. She’s felt him around her, seen them beside one another. The knowing leaves her with nothing and the nothing, oh how it makes her _ache._

  
  


With a wanting reserved for those acquainted with the scratching claws of thirst, her scavenger heart maps the abundance of constellations in the universe and craves _more_. In this new dawn of her life, her eyes have witnessed the enormity of space and the lush green of forests and the roar of ocean waves and they all failed to drown out her desire for depth that swallows. To love the overflow means to recklessly grasp for the darkness, to fall headfirst into whispering caves or haunted hallways or the mind of the man who is supposed to be the enemy.

  
  


This deep part of her, still half-starved and hands-reaching, yearns to strip the denial from her soul and discover the sensations stolen from her childhood: a too-full stomach, ribs sore from laughing recklessly and loud, violent raindrops pelting her brow, fabric that does not rub abrasively against her skin. She buries her wanting under a mental barrage of _there is no passion, there is serenity_ , ushering such unbecoming tastes to the corners of her mind. In this state of compartmentalization, her mind becomes blank except for an image of a haunted Master Luke and _it didn’t scare me enough then_. Of a lightsaber held above a young man swirling with the storms of a young, isolated soul far too much like her own. Of brown eyes, large and betrayed and yet almost resigned.

  
  


Men like Luke Skywalker, raised in the arms of those who loved him, will never comprehend peaceful loneliness; they do not know that the acceptance of abandonment germinates only if alongside the awakening buds of violent hope. The Jedi condemn the coexistence of ferocity and composure; they damn a boy made of a tempest that both feeds and destroys. What then would they say of a girl marked by windstorms, trained in the burning ways of the sun? 

  
  


And so instead of serenity, bitterness coils around her intestines, a slippery darkness burrowed in the deepest parts of her, in places where a Jedi master would never consider to look. 

  
  


But unlike his uncle, _he_ always knows where to look, _he_ has gazed almost hungrily at her ugly parts — but then again, he is no Jedi. His dark eyes (that she would know whether honey brown or tinged with red) always seem to find her, always delve past her walls to her core. Even _here_ he sees her, even after Snoke’s body laid cleaved in half before the two of them, leaving them just as divided. 

  
  


He’s kneeling like he’s accepted the aftermath of their choices, though his eyes mirror her own feelings of betrayal. She almost startles at the materialization of him in front of her in a position of subservience, of surrender.

  
  


Fleetingly, she considers that she almost likes him like this, until a frantic sense of dread urges her to _move_ , to not wait for him to leave first. The sudden hiss of the ramp ascending fills her ears and her blood pounds. 

  
  


She cannot trust herself around him. He causes her to _slip,_ whether into hating him or into reaching for him or into wanting him on his knees before her, acquainting his hands with her body and his hair with her fingers... 

  
  


With a lurch, the ship takes off and she braces herself against the wall, her grip on the Force frayed at the edges. Her eyes float shut as she breathes, attempting to center herself, to usher these… _thoughts_ from her mind. Like a rehearsed dance, she falls into the familiar steps of the kind of denial that kept her counting the days, the type of rehearsed naiveté that protects the mind. In this space, he is evil and the bond exists as something unwanted, outside of herself. The Jedi in her flees to this simplicity, to defined lines and measured breaths. 

  
  


But the girl who looted star destroyers while feverish and parched and weak never knew the luxury of lies. When she could barely sit up in the morning, her brow drenched in sweat and her limbs shivering, the scavenger in her ruthlessly drove her to her feet with the knowledge that her parents were gone and she was alone in the emptiness of the universe and if she did not _keep moving_ , she would die. This part of her takes over now, blinking the hot tears from her eyes, forcing a certain steeliness into her jaw. 

  
  


She may be full of longing, but she is made of grit. 

_____

ii. tides 

  
  


He thinks he knew from the moment he entered the atmosphere of Jakku. 

  
  


A gnawing in his stomach kept him awake during the majority of the trip, tossing and turning. When he could sleep, nightmares long forgotten crept into his mind; he awoke gasping, his body shaking with cold heat. By morning, agitation rolled off of him in waves of dark energy, threatening to boil over at any moment. The crew whispered (he heard) and kept their distance, murmuring variations of decades of rumors concerning his lineage.

  
  


It seems the type of secrets told in hushed tones will forever follow him, whether into the darkness or the light. He will always evoke awe or fear or reverence or some blurred version of the three.

  
  


He thought he would have stopped caring by now (he hasn’t). 

  
  


Alone in front of the windows in his room, he observed the sandy terrain as the backwater junkheap planet hurtled closer and closer. And with the impending landing, he felt a stronger and stronger sense of disgust, coupled with a recoiling familiarity. And suddenly, in blinding flashes, sharp visions began assaulting his senses: an empty stomach, a tally on a wall, a slap across his cheek, a ship flying off into the distance, a small form silently heaving with sobs in the dead of night. Far off in the clouded present, he felt his leather-clad fingers clutching at his skull. 

  
  


He’d seen this all before, of course. Long ago, when he believed in democracy and equality and the Jedi. Until he started seeing _her_. 

  
  


The darkness always hovering in the air around the girl evolved from a place of injustice, her strength flowing from a river sourced from a sea of pain and survival. Yet, she somehow felt pure. Like a desert plant, she bloomed within the protection of the night. She wielded the anger to protect herself, to cultivate longer thorns. 

  
  


How could something born of such necessity be abhorrent? Was her life, bought at the price of blood and tears, not worth the darkness?

  
  


Suddenly, Snoke’s voice, never-ceasing, seemed more appealing. The more he listened to his voice, the smaller hers became, until she existed only as a wisp of a dream from the twilight of his life. For a long time, he convinced himself she never existed. 

  
  


That is, until he landed on Jakku. 

  
  


By the time he made planetfall, the rage streamed like black shards through his blood, crying out for vengeance. If he had not known yet, he knew the moment he left a boot print in the sands. He knew the moment he gazed into the eyes of villagers who he’d seen, who _she’d seen_ , who watched her suffer for years without raising a hand to help. 

  
  


_Kill them all,_ and he cannot deny the thrumming satisfaction he felt at watching the terror in the eyes of the families who never took her in, who so easily turned away from the hollow cheeks of the young girl he had seen since adolescence, who he had thought for years was just another one of Snoke’s macabre manipulations. These villagers are the first murders ordered by his hand that he does not feel vibrate through his chest. And he faced the truth as soon as their bodies hit the ground: the girl who had been in his mind for years was real, and she was nearby. Perhaps more dangerously, he realized he would haze planets for her. Not long after, he killed his master in her name. 

  
  


Now, he kneels closely to the ground, staring at the space her visage occupied moments ago. Despite the changes that developed between them since they fought together, since she left him in Snoke’s burning throne room, she still looked the same. Her chestnut waves hung loosely and her big eyes gazed at him with the same tenacity he remembers from his teenage visions. 

  
  


He thinks he would remember her lifetimes from now, he feels like he will always be _looking_ . A flickering ghost of a smile flits across his face, thinking of her and him and them in another space and time. He cannot imagine her without brown shiny hair or hazel eyes or slender, strong limbs and he entertains the idea that despite possibilities, she would always look like _Rey_. Steadfast and strong and sure, always scrappy, bright-eyed Rey. 

  
  


He supposes this must be why he would be the one looking, since she is the one to never change. The brief crease in her brow when he removed his mask for her the first time had sliced through his center, almost causing him to doubt. Her eyes roved over his form like he was a word she could not articulate, like a nostalgic melody, half-known and half-forgotten. 

  
  


He’d always felt the need to reinvent himself, to become something else. As a child, he spent hours in his mother’s room during the brief times when they were both home, learning the art of manners and gestures and strategically polite threats disguised as well-placed compliments. He donned various styles of clothing, studied diverse cultures. Always shifting, he inherited the chameleon parts of both of his parents. 

So much so that he molded a gangly, awkward boy into the master of the Knights of Ren. He wrapped himself in black, covered his face with a helmet, learned to walk and talk and act with the sole purpose of intimidation. 

  
  


But she had called him a _creature in a mask_ , all trembling limbs and fierce defiance, and he caved to her will, no longer concerned with the persona he spent years honing. Underneath her words, he recognized her need to see him, to identify the truth with her own eyes. In his own vehement, forceful way, he became what she needed, molding himself to meet her at every strike, in every battle whether one of clashing lightsabers or scathing wit. 

  
  


She needed to feel vengeance and he allowed her to mark his face. She wanted to understand, so he let her see him vulnerable, halfway dressed and alone in his room. When she finally was ready to move on, he reached for her hand and vowed _everything_ , all he had gained in eight long years. Still she refused to give in, still she questioned him and their bond, still she denied the knowing he sensed in her soul. She shunned his hand, left him alone with his foolishness and his shame for begging and pleading with her like a stupid child, for thinking she might… that she could possibly, somehow…

  
  


Angrily, he stands from the ground and strides out of the resistance bunker. If she insists upon being so immovable, he will simply become more fluid. He watched her barriers fall for a brief moment in the throne room; he knows she is not as unaffected as she portrays. Desire lurks in her scavenger heart; he has caught glimpses of it, past her thorns. So he will rely upon his wavering, he will shift into whatever form she craves, he will rampage until her determination crumbles, until she agrees to stand at his side as he foresaw. 

  
  


Every voice in his head has always told him that his indecisiveness makes him weak, but perhaps his weakness will be the downfall of her strength. He is made of tides, of the type of restless ebb and flow that can erode even her solid foundations. 

Something in him shudders at the thought of being the river that splits her in two. 

**Author's Note:**

> this piece started out as a conceptualization of rey and ben as individuals / as a dyad and slowly turned into... something. is it a fix-it fic? maybe. have i any conception of the plot? barely. am i going to try to fit every single one of my headcanons into this? most likely.
> 
> welcome to the convoluted journey of my first fic (and thanks for reading if you made it to this part) 
> 
> -b


End file.
